Ultimate Guide to Picking Your Wedding Flowers

Are you a bride or wedding planner organizing an exquisite wedding, and are looking to impress guests, highlight your unique style, and create memories that will last a lifetime? When it comes to saying “I do,” nothing expresses love or brings the tying of the knot to a classy culmination like a beautiful, well-coordinated wedding ceremony and reception — complete with a breathtaking theme, gorgeous decor, and, of course, the perfect wedding flowers.

Your wedding flower choices play a large part in completing your aesthetic and expressing your personal style through floral arrangements — but the wide variety of available blooms, shades, and arrangement types may have you wondering how you’ll ever decide.

If you don’t know where to start with picking your wedding flowers, don’t worry. We’re here to guide you through the process by helping you with planning your budget, finding a flower source, choosing your wedding flowers based on various factors, and figuring out how to arrange them. From deciding on bloom types and colors to combining your arrangements in beautiful ways to suit your style, here is a collection of helpful tips for choosing your wedding flowers.

Planning Your Budget for Flowers

Before you begin picking blooms for your bridal bouquet or considering what flowers to use for your wedding, it’s crucial to consider your budget. Consider your financial limitations for your flowers — how simple or extravagant do you picture your arrangements, and what are you comfortable spending to make those visions a reality? To start, think about your wedding budget as a whole.

Most brides spend eight to 10 percent of their full wedding budgets on flowers, so that’s a good place to start for cost projections and what you may look to spend in the flower department. Of course, that number can vary depending on the complexity of your arrangements, the number of arrangements you need for your venue and ceremony, and the types of flowers you order. Elaborate arrangements and in-demand blooms will require a bigger budget, while more modest arrangements, simple flowers, and incorporating more greenery can be less expensive.

When planning your floral budget, you should also consider the distribution of your entire budget on other aspects of your wedding and think about which areas are most important to you or your client. If, for example, you’re splurging on the most expensive, luxurious wedding dress you can find, or you’re going all out on reception decor, you may not have a problem with a more modest floral budget. If, however, you expect your flower arrangements to be one of the highlights of your wedding’s aesthetic, it’s better to make a bigger budget allowance to make sure you can satisfy your expectations.

Finding a Florist For Your Wedding Flowers

When you have your budget mostly planned out in anticipation of the flowers needed for your wedding, it’s time to select a source for the most beautiful blooms to make your wedding an inspiration. You want your wedding bouquet and floral arrangements to match your style, season and budget, so finding the right florist with the right kind of flowers is critical.

Before selecting your florist, do your research and become familiar with the basics of blooms and arrangements, and gather some inspiration. Familiarize yourself with the most widely-used kinds of wedding flowers — such as peonies, hydrangeas, roses, and more — and get a bit of aesthetic inspiration by exploring the internet, wedding magazines, and other sources. Becoming comfortable with the style, shape, color, texture, and type of flower you prefer (or your client, if you’re a wedding planner) —and then knowing how those aspects match with popular wedding flowers —will help you articulate your vision to your florist in the right language.

When choosing your wedding flowers and your florist, you should also consider whether you plan to use live flowers or lifelike silk blooms. You can discuss your options with the florist, who will know the specifics of flower care — but to help you understand the benefits of each and decide which will suit your wedding better, here’s a comparison of the two:

Live flowers are alive, of course, so they need plant flood and stem maintenance to keep them looking vibrant, smelling fresh and remaining luscious for your bouquets and arrangements. You’ll also need to purchase and arrange them at the right times to keep them alive and looking the best when it matters — during your wedding! Silk flowers are a bit easier to maintain because they don’t require water or maintenance, meaning they’ll last as long as you like and look as good throughout the wedding as they did the moment they arrived. Since they don’t have an expiration period, you also don’t have to worry about when to buy flowers for your wedding — you can purchase them as far ahead of time as you like and know they’ll be good through your wedding day and beyond.

Live flowers may wilt or shed petals if not maintained well or if exposed to not ideal temperatures. Silk flowers will hold their shape and continue to look lifelike and vibrant through long events and ceremonies, no matter the environment.

Silk flowers lack a fragrance, so if you’re looking for that divine, fresh-bloom scent, you’ll find it with live flowers.

Live flowers need water, so you’ll need to make sure your arrangements are placed in vases with water or have water supplies in their dressings if you expect them to remain perky throughout the event. Silk flowers are dry decorations, so you have a little more variety in terms of arrangement options, complementary decor and placement in your reception and ceremony venue.

Both live and high-quality silk flowers look colorful, vibrant, lush, and attractive when you choose the right source, so the kind of flower that works best for you depends on your tastes!

When searching for florists to provide fresh, live blooms and arrangements, look for a place that understands your tastes and can match your aesthetic vision. If you’d prefer the lifelike look and low maintenance of stunning silk blooms for your beautiful bouquets and wedding flower arrangements, select your own favorite flowers from Jamali Garden’s beautiful silk flower collection. You can still hire a professional to arrange your silk blooms, or you can try your hand at arranging them for yourself or your client.

How to Choose Wedding Flowers to Work With Your Color Scheme

If you’re having any trouble deciding what flowers to use for your wedding, it may be best if you stop focusing on the types of blooms, seasonal ins or outs, and other specific details. Instead, focus on color, and take it from there. What’s your wedding’s color scheme? Whether or not your wedding revolves around an aesthetic theme like rustic, vintage, or modern, you should have a color scheme composed of one or two main colors — such as blush pink, violet, blue, olive green, coral, or summery yellow — or whatever suits your fancy! After selecting your primary color, choose an accent color. (Which is often a light shade or neutral color.)

Just like your wedding attire, stationery, table decor, lighting, linens, and other wedding decorations, your wedding flowers should tastefully complement or bring out the key colors in your color scheme. For your bouquets and arrangements, decide whether you want to bring out your theme colors by using blooms in those shades. Complement them with by picking flowers in your accent color or use a combination of all your theme colors. You can build monochrome bouquets that focus specifically on one color in varying shades — like plum, violet, and lavender — or create more diverse arrangements that use multiple colors. Similarly, you can choose to keep it simple with one type of flower or incorporate mixed varieties into your arrangement.

Know that certain flowers are more likely to come in a variety of colors, and some have a more limited natural palette. Tulips, lilies, carnations, roses, mums, and dahlias, for example, are available in almost every color and can provide you with a variety of choices when it comes to hues. Peonies, hydrangeas, and anemones, on the other hand, only come in a few beautiful shades, so they work best for specific color schemes like pink, red, and blue. Opting for silk flowers can widen your options, since silk flowers can come in almost any color.

When picking wedding flowers to fit your color scheme, be specific about your color choices to find the closest flower matches to the colors present in the rest of your decor. It can help to use specific color names accompanied by fabric swatches, paint samples, and photos of your attire and decor for the best chance of choosing the flowers that complement the rest of your color scheme.

Seasonal Considerations

If you’re using live flowers and want the freshest in-season blooms or are incorporating a seasonal theme as the basis of your wedding, you’ll want to choose flowers specific to the season in which your wedding will take place. No matter the season and color scheme, you can find beautiful blooms to complement your aesthetic and make your wedding gorgeous. Here are some of the wedding flowers blooming in each season:

Spring

Spring flowers are known for their fresh fragrances and soft appearances. Blooming in beautiful pinks, purples, blues, and violets, spring flowers decorate your venue with luscious, lovely petals symbolizing new beginnings. Greenery is especially beautiful in spring-inspired bouquets. The most popular blooms you can pick from in this season include:

Dogwood

Delphinium

Apple blossoms

Cherry blossoms

Daffodils

Irises

Forsythia

Hyacinths

Hydrangeas

Gerberas

Peonies

Pansies

Lilies

Lilacs

Sweet peas

Roses

Tulips

Summer

Summer blooms bring a warmth, vibrance, and brightness into your wedding. They are typically colorful, sunny, and perfect for bringing out your beautiful color scheme. Incorporate a tropical or beach theme with seashells, tropical leaves, and blue in your variety of blooms. Summer seasonal flowers include:

Anemone

Calla lilies

Dahlias

Daisies

Orchids

Delphinium

Chrysanthemums

Sunflowers

Zinnias

Queen Anne’s lace

Freesia

Green hydrangeas

Fall

Earthy, rich, and warm, rustic autumn blooms make a ravishing addition to your seasonal wedding. Add in some autumn foliage, branches, acorns, and apple decorations to complement your tasteful aesthetic and add an even more autumnal feel. Some of the most popular fall wedding flowers include:

Calla lilies

Chrysanthemums

Marigolds

Zinnias

Sunflowers

Roses

Gerbera daisies

Dahlias

Yarrow

Winter

You may think winter doesn’t yield many in-season options for flowers, but there are several lovely bloom varieties to choose from for your winter-themed wedding. Whether you’re opting for an all-white color scheme, incorporating blues and creams into your palette, or adding some rich red for a rustic touch, you can achieve your frosty or festive look with multiple flowers. Winter seasonal blooms include classics like:

Camellias

Forget-me-nots

Jasmine

Holly

Orchids

Gardenias

Roses

Poinsettias

Mini gerberas

Anemone

Amaryllis

Tried-and-True Wedding Flowers

If you’re still struggling with deciding what flowers to use for your wedding, settling for some classic blooms can be the best way to go for your bouquets, centerpieces, and other arrangements. Here are some tried-and-true, timeless wedding flowers that will look lovely in your flower arrangements:

Roses: A classic bloom considered to be a symbol of love and beauty, roses are tasteful, age-old wedding flowers with an ample supply of both meaning and visual interest. Available in numerous varieties, roses come in almost every color you can imagine, including multi-color combinations.

Tulips: As an icon of lasting happiness and consuming love, tulips can be another fantastic choice for your wedding bouquets and arrangements. This chic, sleek, sweet bloom is grown in a plethora of colors and varieties, including creams and whites, vibrant shades of the rainbow, and soft pastels. Tulips are also available throughout the majority of the year, making them a convenient as well as a lovely choice to fit either formal aesthetics or more relaxed wedding settings. The most common varieties include Dutch tulips, parrot tulips, and French tulips.

Hydrangeas: With a large, luscious blooming head that looks like a beautiful cluster of smaller flowers, the hydrangea makes a strong statement in your floral arrangements. It’s also ideal for filling out bouquets of other flower varieties. You’ll find this bold bloom in shades of white, green, deep purple, bright blue, passionate pink, and rich burgundy.

Peonies: With a large, blooming flower head composed of a curling array of delicate petals, peonies add a gorgeous aesthetic element perfect for both formal arrangements or more rustic themes. Available in both single- and double-flower types, this bloom offers you the choice of herbaceous or tree peony and comes in a gorgeous variety of bright colors.

Ranunculi: Multi-colored, lush and similar in appearance to both roses and peonies, the ranunculus is a buttercup-type flower with a beautiful, blooming head. Available mainly in pink, white, orange and yellow, this flower is a perfect choice for brides and event planners on a stricter flower budget because it’s a less expensive but equally beautiful alternative to other pricier blooms like roses.

Calla Lilies: Elegant, exotic, and boldly beautiful, this bloom is perfect for either modern or classic weddings. Available in ivory, orange, mauve, yellow, and deep purple, calla lilies come in a large-headed type of bloom ideal for tall arrangements and a miniature version well-suited to boutonnieres.

Where to To Place Flowers Needed for Your Wedding

Once you’ve settled on the wedding flowers perfect for your aesthetic, arrangements and designs, you’ll need to know how many floral arrangements you can anticipate and where they’ll go. To help you plan ahead, here are the most common uses of bouquets and flower arrangements in weddings:

Bridal Bouquet: As the iconic flower piece of your wedding, the bridal bouquet is the biggest arrangement and will most often include multiple types of flowers, along with various hues from your color scheme. Your bridal bouquet should both bring out the bride’s beauty and unite her with the decor and aesthetic of the wedding setting. Because it’s so special, it should be the only arrangement of its kind, differing from both the bridesmaids’ bouquets and other floral arrangements around the ceremony and reception.

Boutonniere: The boutonniere is a tiny arrangement pinned to the groom’s tuxedo and should also stand apart from other flower arrangements and be unique in its style, while still complementing the overall wedding decor and the bridal bouquet.

Bridesmaid Bouquets: These bouquets are carried by the bridesmaids and can include fewer flower varieties and hues — perhaps incorporating only one color from your color scheme. The maid of honor’s bouquet may differ from those intended for the other bridesmaids.

Ceremony Entryway: Often, the door, arch, pillars, or entryway of the wedding ceremony makes a lasting impression when adorned with lovely flower arrangements in a blooming variety of flower types, colors, and greenery. It welcomes guests and sets the mood for the aesthetic of both the wedding and the reception.

Place Card Table or Guestbook Table: It’s a good idea to add aesthetic interest to the tables holding your guestbook or place cards. Use a beautiful bouquet or a clever arrangement of the blooms you feature around the rest of your wedding venue.

Aisle Runners: To soften the angles and draw together the colors of your wedding aesthetic, you may wish to add small bouquets or single blooms in vases lining your aisle. It’s not a necessity, but this flower arrangement choice lends a tasteful degree of sophistication and intimacy to your ceremony.

Reception Tables: When your guests sit down to a meal and dessert at your wedding reception, you want your tables to be beautiful and decorated according to your theme, and nothing makes a better centerpiece than beautifully arranged blooms in vases or bowls.

Wedding Cake and Buffet Tables: Bring out the color scheme and draw together the various aspects of your wedding theme by adding some blooms to your food tables alongside your wedding cake and other delectables.

Bring Your Wedding Into Bloom With Jamali Garden

Deciding what flowers to use for your wedding can be a complicated process with multiple considerations when it comes to color, type, style, and price, but the right flowers will make your wedding a day you’ll never forget. If you’re thinking of incorporating stunning silk blooms into your bouquets and flower arrangements, Jamali Garden has all the lifelike, luscious silk flowers you need. As a wholesale source of gorgeous floral and decor items, we’re invested in inspiring you to fall in love with your wedding theme and bring it to life. Browse our beautiful selection of silk flowers and other wedding decor items today!